Waiters pass like ghosts between the tables, balancing silver trays of champagne and Don Julio on the tips of their fingers. A mariachi band in silver-buttoned pants and cropped jackets plays lively predinner music. The ground nearly trembles with the room’s heightened energy. There must be seven or eight hundred people here. Lore has always thought Laredo weddings are big, with all the various compromisos leading to hundreds of guests, some of whom the bride and groom hardly know, but in comparison they seem intimate and slipshod, like backyard carne asadas.
Lore is sitting with a group of Mr. Santos’s more personal business associates: Jaime, his architect, and his wife, Mariela; Ramón, his CPA, and his wife—Lore had to ask twice to make sure she wasn’t mistaken—Ramona; his cardiologist, Dr. Olivares, and his wife, Cynthia; and Andres, his daughter’s professor and adviser at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Lore wishes there were more entrepreneurial types at her table, but there will be plenty of time to network in the guise of celebrating.
The other women lean toward each other as they sip their champagne, touch the elaborate floral centerpieces as they talk about the beauty of the ceremony, the jaw-dropping length of the bride’s mantilla. What they’re really talking about, Lore knows, is how much it all must have cost. She joins the conversation, though her ears are with the men, who are essentially having the same discussion.
“His businesses must be doing well,” Dr. Olivares comments.
Ramón, the only one at the table who would know besides Lore, answers politely. “Fernando is very dedicated.”
“I wonder where she bought her dress,” Ramona says. “Here or in New York.”
Cynthia scoffs. “DF has some of the best shopping in the world. Why would she go spend six times more in New York? Especially now?”
“Because it’s New York,” Ramona breathes.
“What do you think, Lore?” Andres asks, and for a moment she isn’t sure which conversation she’s supposed to be following. “You said you’re in banking?”
“Yes,” Lore says, finishing her first glass of champagne as another is seamlessly placed before her.
“How has the devaluation impacted the retail sector on the border?” Andres asks, and Lore is amused that he, too, had an ear in both conversations, bridging them with academic ease.
“Honestly,” Lore says, “it’s like a bomb has gone off.” She thinks of the women squatting to comparison shop for generic canned goods and bagged cereal on the bottom shelves at H-E-B, and how many more men there are outside Dr. Ike’s, waiting to jump on flatbeds that never come. She thinks of all the CERRADO signs and rolled-down security grilles downtown, as if everyone inside has simply vanished.
Andres angles himself toward her slightly. “Tell me more,” he says.
Lore looks at him more closely. He’s around forty, she guesses, with black hair swept back from his forehead and tucked behind his ears. His eyes are a clear, startling green, like a broken bottle catching sunlight. Proud nose, heavy eyebrows giving him a look of earnest concentration. His Spanish is clipped, some of his s’s missing—she can’t quite place his accent, but he doesn’t sound Mexican.
“Well,” Lore says, “Laredo’s main industry is retail. Now . . .” She trails off, thinking of Fabian, wondering how it went, firing Juan. The city smells like desperation. “Without that income from across, nearly a third of the city is out of work.”
“A third.” Andres shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”
“And to think, we were at ten percent only two years ago,” Lore says, remembering what she now knows was a boom time, Fabian asking his mom to babysit while he swept her off to the Cadillac Bar, or surprising her with a pair of gold-and-topaz earrings lumpy inside her pillowcase. They were planning to remodel their house. The peso devalued before they had a chance. At least they aren’t one of the thousands who needed to abandon a construction project midbuild, the city scattered with the carcasses of dreams.
“What about the maquiladoras?” Andres asks. “Fernando owns several dozen, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Lore says, “though mostly in Juárez. But you’re right: Mexican income, returned to the U.S. through purchases, plus U.S. manufacturing jobs to provide the materials for assembly—in normal times it’s a win-win. But when you don’t have buyers for the final products . . .” She opens her hands on the table, then realizes with a start that she’s not wearing her wedding rings. She put all her jewelry in the safe before sliding into her bath. She touches her chest, where her gold locket usually rests, and encounters only skin.
“How old are you, Lore, if you don’t mind my asking?” asks Dr. Olivares, peering at her through square-framed gold glasses.
His wife, Cynthia, swats him on the shoulder. “Ay, Héctor. You’re the one showing your age.”
The table laughs, Lore along with them. She’s used to this—older men first assuming she’s a secretary or maybe a new-accounts rep, then reappraising her suspiciously when she opens her mouth. She doubts Dr. Olivares would ask Oscar, if he were here, for his age, though he is actually two years younger than Lore. But this is the way things are in the business world—perhaps in any kind of world, and especially in Mexico. If she were to show offense, she would be committing that ultimate sin of femaleness: oversensitivity. She’s learned better than that.
“I’m thirty-two,” Lore says.
“And how long have you been with the bank?”
“Let’s see,” Lore says, though she doesn’t need to think about it. “It’s been eight years now.”
Lore had started as a teller when she was twenty and believed she would return after her six-week maternity leave. How naive she had been then, how utterly unprepared for the brutality of motherhood. Cooped up in their tiny rental during the cuarentena, family streaming in and out without warning: Marta with tortilla soup, Mami with her brusque and capable hands, Fabian’s mother dispensing useless advice, his father with cigars, not realizing or caring how little she could spare Fabian for forty backslapping minutes in the backyard because those two tiny newborns were too much for her to handle alone.
Six weeks after the cuates were born, they were still under six pounds each, with red-soled feet the size of fallen leaves and wild, heart-stopping cries like cats in heat. Her nipples were crusted with scabs, every letdown triggering a warm gush of blood between her legs. She was still healing from a third-degree tear, her body split from one intimate end to the other. The idea of returning to work was laughable and cruel, like a soldier rushing back to battle with skin flapping open, metal buried in his body, festering. And so, the weeks turned to months and the months to years. She finally returned when the boys were in preschool, starting again as a teller and rising through nearly every position until her most recent promotion to officer, three years ago.
Andres smiles at her, warm and knowing. “Did you always want to be a banker?”
“I wanted to be Robinson Crusoe,” Lore says wryly, as waiters place salad plates before them. “Life on a desert island seemed like heaven to me as a kid.”
“Even with the cannibals?”
Lore laughs. “They couldn’t have been worse than my siblings. Besides, Crusoe was free to be who he was there. Not perfect. Not even always good. I longed for that kind of freedom.”
“What’s wrong with being good, though?” asks Mariela, the architect’s wife. Her cheeks are flushed at the high points. “The world respects a good woman.”
“Does it?” Lore spears an overripe tomato. Guts spill. “Or does it just appreciate a meek one?”